Sunday, September 14, 2008

The Mother of All Mondays

(Wall St Journal-MarketBeat Blog) Investors world-wide have rarely rolled out of bed to face a Monday morning quite like the one they’ll contend with this Monday.

Sundays have long been host to important corporate news, from big mergers to bankruptcies. But this weekend, in an extraordinary meeting that recalled the summit called ten years ago amid the meltdown of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management and J. Pierpont Morgan’s efforts more than 100 years ago to rescue a series of ailing banks, Wall Street’s most senior deal makers and regulators raced to find a deal that would keep storied Lehman Brothers Holdings from collapse. At this hour, their efforts have yet to yield any fruit. Barclays, which had come to be viewed over the weekend as the most likely bidder for the badly ailing Lehman, pushed away from the bargaining table on Sunday. The main impediment appeared to be that the U.S. government is reluctant to backstop a deal, as it had amid the Bear Stearns meltdown in March.

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